Bring on the High Elves. The vortex looked great. It does make me wonder if there will be some End Times like scenario in the game. It brings al lot of the races involved in the ET. Should be fun. I managed not to get the first TW:WH game. Mainly by telling myself that I didn't have time and it was lacking interesting races. But HE and Skaven? Looking forward.

It was to be expected to be released this fast. Although I would have expected it to be an extention of the first game by just releasing more races and campaigns instead of a completely new game.

Rod

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Eirik wrote:

Please try to remember that, no matter how 'official' the source seems, rumours are basically just a dictionary combined with a random number generator

I think it's a bit of both - you don't need the original to play, but if you HAVE the original they'll connect together (once the megacampaign is done) and act like expansions to one another. Kind of like the Starcraft 2 model. It's a model that does somewhat rely on releasing the installments within a couple of years of one another, and most companies can't get away with dragging things out as much as Blizzard does, so I'm not surprised to see a 2017 expected release.

The mega campaign sounds fun as well. Could very well be a reason to get game 1 as well as nr 2.

I also ran across an educated guess that we'll see Chaos Dwarves in game 3... CA has announced there will be 4 races per game. And there's 4 DLC races in TW:WH 1. Which gives 16 races, while there's only 15 current army books.

Rod

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Eirik wrote:

Please try to remember that, no matter how 'official' the source seems, rumours are basically just a dictionary combined with a random number generator

i haven't seen it directly, but CA has apparently confirmed that their long-term plan encompasses all of the fifteen 8E army books plus Chaos Dwarfs... and may go further. A lot of people are pushing for them to also include some of the human factions that GW didn't do and which are nevertheless on the current campaign map or will be on the mega campaign map - Kislev, Tilea, Estalia and the Border Princes currently use Empire units, and there's a good chance Araby will be in the megacampaign map when it lands. (Note that one could say that the Dogs of War list could be considered to be representative of Tilea, and to a lesser extent Estalia and the Border Princes, and there was at least a partial list for Kislev published in White Dwarf during 6E - there are no indications of whether CA will use any of these, however, and they've indicated that they want to do the core army book factions first.)

There was also a datamine before any of the DLCs landed, which had the following information:

(Note that Bretonnia has been released as FLC, so the currently released factions are Empire, Dwarfs, O&G, VC, WoC, Beastmen, WE, Bretonnia)

CA's response to the datamine is that it's out of date, and plans have changed since - however, they've also indicated that their plans have expanded in scope (TW:WH did better than expected, so they're putting more resources into it). An initial effect of this seems to be that they're putting Skaven into game 2 directly rather than having them as DLC. A lot of people have also questioned whether they're really going to stick to a 'four flavours of Chaos' model for game 3, since such a model may have little to interest people who aren't Chaos fans. Certainly, though, it does look like Chaos Dwarfs are going to be in - eventually - one way or another. On the other hand, a lot of people think that Tomb Kings will be introduced before game 3 (they do occupy what would be a strategic location for the megacampaign) - which means that they'd have to do something unexpected to get four races for game 3. (This could, however, mean doing WoC properly: what's currently in-game is essentially a filler because they had to have a northern Chaos invasion of some form.)

One other thing to note, speaking of the datamine... the datamine also came with a world map showing Ulthuan and the New World being significantly shrunk compared to the Old World. By that, I'm meaning Ulthuan being about the size of, if not smaller than, Bretonnia, and the entire region being about two-thirds the size of the Old World. I'm pretty sure that map is out of date (and possibly merely a filler all along), but do be prepared for some pretty major distortions in scale.

TL:DR Unless plans change, Chaos Dwarfs will be in... eventually. May be game 2 DLC, may be game 3, may be game 3 DLC.

The races mentioned in the datamine for Game 3 aren't that interesting unless you're a hard-core chaos fan. It would effectively be some form of civil war and a lot more limited in initial scope at least then for instance HE / DE / LM (+Skaven).

Complete speculation, but I would more likely go for something like Chaos, Ogre Kingdoms, Dogs of War (for the northern kingdoms), Empire (or one of the speculative eastern races like nipon). Chaos Dwarves just 'screams' DLC, since I think many people would want them and thus are willing to pay separately for them.

As for how the world map will look, I think the end result will largely depend on play testing. You want a balance between starting positions for races, easy expansion option and hard to reach area's. Shrinking the new world and Ulthuan will decrease the power level of the races based there (or increase difficulty, whichever way you want to look at it). And so you will want some form of balance. I'm not too worried about that yet.

A thought did pop into my mind writing this. Looking at the world map, TW:WH1 gave the old world, so essentially the central part of the world map, TW:WH2 brings the new world, which is the western side of the map. That leaves the east (and south) to explore in TW:WH3.

Rod

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Eirik wrote:

Please try to remember that, no matter how 'official' the source seems, rumours are basically just a dictionary combined with a random number generator

They're including the Southlands in game 2. Now, that doesn't necessarily include the desert areas, but having a megacampaign with the Southlands in but with Araby and Nehekhara out would be... curious, to say the least. So what's left for TWW3 appears to be the east... and the Realm of Chaos itself.

And yeah, there's been a lot of discussion on how the datamine list for Game 3 is very Chaos-focused and thus might not have a lot to offer to non-Chaos people. Even throwing in Chaos Dwarfs and Ogre Kingdoms means you've essentially got multiple flavours of Chaos, the Ogres, and no faction that's even vaguely normal or Order-aligned.

Avoiding that looks like it would require bringing in more races that Games Workshop didn't do, or at least didn't bring to 8E. Giving Kislev a unique list and making it playable is a common suggestion. Somebody on the Total War forums did some digging on Cathay, and found a surprising amount there - enough that you probably could build a quite varied army list from it - so that's a possibility if they want to go for a truly global megacampaign (I'm not betting on it, but it's a possibility, and could be awesome if it does happen).

CA have worked with Games Workshop to create new units already - for instance, they worked with both Games Workshop and the writer of the 6E Bretonnian book to come up with some new Bretonnian units to expand their list. Coming up with an entire army that was never a full army (or implemented at all) on the tabletop would be a big additional step, but CA seem to be in pretty good graces with GW right now - they might well get the go-ahead and the support to do it.